They never found the body of the first boy who broke my heart.
The kids in the schoolyard say the tangled vines in the forest ate him up, the high school students in the cafeteria say he ran after a girl and away from the mining business that was his future, the men in the police uniforms say he took his own life.
No one knows what actually happened to him.
No one but me. No one knows he is out there three miles into the deep thicket of the woods behind the junior high buried under six feet of cold soil with a slit to his throat. It was too bad the things ended the way they did, such a pretty face wasted away. Splattered with blood and caked with compost with the pendant of a heart still clinging to his neck.
My promise ring wrapped in his cold clammy hands.
Yes, sometimes I do feel remorse for what I did. Perhaps, when I hear his mother’s quiet sobs in the back pews at church, a pang of guilt rings in my ears. Or when I see his name etched into my bedpost from all those years ago yes I do feel the slightest bit sorry for what I did. Sometimes I think that little hash could have been sorted out with a simple talk or walk in the park, but then of course I remember that he put a bullet in the head of my best friend.